Chapter 2
CHAPTER II. BADLY SOWED. but the task of sages is one thing the task of clever men is another the revolution of eighteen thirty came to a sudden halt as soon as a revolution has made the coast the skilful make haste to prepare the shipwreck the skilful in our century have conferred on themselves the title of statesman so that this word statesman has ended by becoming somewhat of a slang word it must be borne in mind in fact that wherever there is nothing but skill there is necessarily pettiness to say the skilful amounts to saying the mediocre in the same way to say statesmen is sometimes equivalent to saying traitors if then we are to believe the skilful revolutions like the revolution of july are severed arteries a prompt ligature is indispensable the right too grandly proclaimed is shaken also right once firmly fixed the state must be strengthened liberty once assured attention must be directed to power
here the sages are not as yet separated from the skilful but they begin to be distrustful power very good but in the first place what is power in the second whence comes it the skilful do not seem to hear the murmured objection and they continue their manoeuvres according to the politicians who are ingenious in putting the mask of necessity on profitable fiction the first requirement of a people after a revolution when this people forms part of a monarchical continent is to procure for itself a dynasty in this way they say peace that is to say time to dress our wounds and to repair the house can be had after a revolution the dynasty conceals the scaffolding and covers the ambulance now it is not always easy to procure a dynasty if it is absolutely necessary the first man of genius or even the first man of fortune who comes to hand suffices for the manufacturing of a king you have in the first place napoleon in the second but the first family that comes to hand does not suffice to make a dynasty there is necessarily required a certain modicum of antiquity in a race and the wrinkle of the centuries cannot be improvised
if we place ourselves at the point of view of the statesman after making all allowances of course after a revolution what are the qualities of a king which result from it he may be and it is useful for him to be a revolutionary that is to say a participant in his own person in that revolution that he should have lent a hand to it that he should have either compromised or distinguished himself therein that he should have touched the axe or wielded the sword in it what are the qualities of a dynasty it should be national that is to say revolutionary at a distance not through acts committed but by reason of ideas excepted it should be composed of past and be historic be composed of future and be sympathetic all this explains why the early revolutions contented themselves with finding a man cromwell or napoleon and why the second absolutely insisted on finding a family the house of brunswick or the house of orleans royal houses resemble those indian fig-trees each branch of which bending over to the earth takes root and becomes a fig-tree itself each branch may become a dynasty on the sole condition that it shall bend down to the people such is the theory of the skilful
here then lies the great art to make a little render to success the sound of a catastrophe in order that those who profit by it may tremble from it also to season with fear every step that is taken to augment the curve of the transition to the point of retarding progress to dull that aurora to denounce and retrench the harshness of enthusiasm to cut all angles and nails to wad triumph to muffle upright to envelope the giant people in flannel and to put it to bed very speedily to impose a diet on that excess of health to put hercules on the treatment of a convalescent to dilute the event with the expedient to offer to spirits thirsting for the ideal that nectar thinned out with a potion to take one's precaution against too much success to garnish the revolution with a shade eighteen thirty practise this theory already applied to england by sixteen eighty eight eighteen thirty is a revolution arrested midway half of progress quasi right now logic knows not the almost absolutely as the sun knows not the candle who arrests revolutions half-way the bourgeoisie why because the bourgeoisie is interest which has reached satisfaction yesterday it was appetite to-day it is plenitude to-morrow it will be satiety
the phenomenon of eighteen fourteen after napoleon was reproduced in eighteen thirty after charles x the attempt has been made and wrongly to make a class of the bourgeoisie the bourgeoisie is simply the contented portion of the people the bourgeois is the man who now has time to sit down a chair is not a cast but through a desire to sit down too soon one may arrest the very march of the human race this has often been the fault of the bourgeoisie one is not a class because one has committed a fault selfishness is not one of the divisions of the social order moreover we must be just to selfishness the state to which that part of the nation which is called the bourgeoisie aspired after the shock of eighteen thirty was not the inertia which is complicated with indifference and laziness and which contains a little shame it was not the slumber which presupposes a momentary forgetfulness accessible to dreams it was the halt the halt is a word formed of a singular double and almost contradictory sense a troop on the march that is to say movement a stand that is to say repose
the halt is the restoration of forces it is repose armed and on the alert it is the accomplished fact which posts sentinels and holds itself on its guard the halt presupposes the combat of yesterday and the combat of to-morrow it is the partition between eighteen thirty and eighteen forty eight what we here call combat may also be designated as progress the bourgeoisie then as well as the statesman required a man who should express this word halt and although because a composite individuality signifying revolution and signifying stability in other terms strengthening the present by the evident compatibility of the past with the future this man was already found his name was louis philippe d'orleans the two twenty one made louis philippe king lafayette undertook the coronation who called it the best of republic the town hall of paris took the place of the cathedral of rheims this substitution of a half-throne for a whole throne was the work of eighteen thirty when the skilful had finished the immense vice of their solution became apparent all this had been accomplished outside the bounds of absolute right absolute right cried i protest then terrible to say it retired into the darkness chapter two
